More and more students choosing their school

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, September 2, 2008

By A.J. O'CONNELL

aoconnell@thestamfordtimes.com

STAMFORD -- Two years ago when the Stamford public schools offered school choice to families at schools deemed In Need of Improvement, six families opted out of their home schools and chose to attend other schools in the district.

This year, the Stamford schools found themselves faced with more than 350 families who wished to remove their children from their Title I schools and place them into the district's two high-performing magnets: Toquam and Westover.

On Friday, Aug. 29, Westover principal Kathy Wunder was overwhelmed with late-registering students in the office. On that first day, Wunder said that Westover had 13 new students who had opted out of their home schools. She was expecting more.

"We're slated to take 25 kids," she said. "They're still taking calls downtown."

Louise Spolowitz, principal at Toquam Magnet, was expecting about 453 students this year, tops -- her school suffered the ravages of redistricting last year, and in July had less than 20 students registered for Kindergarten.

On Wednesday, she was looking at a school population of 482.

"We're entering children into Starbase (the school data system) as fast as we can," she said.

Record numbers of families are choosing to leave their schools this year.

"324 (applicants) made it by the Aug. 26th deadline and 32 were late," said Mara Siladi, director of grants and funded programs for the Stamford Schools.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, families in Title I schools that are not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) must be offered school choice by their district. This is the first year that intradistrict magnet schools Westover and Toquam have been offered to parents as schools of choice.

Siladi believes that the numbers are up from 6 to 356 because now the schools must offer choice to families at seven schools, not two. She also believes that parents are taking advantage of this new chance to get their children into the magnet schools.

"Our magnets were not offered before," she said.

Siladi also thinks there might be some miscommunication; some families who received letters notifying them about school choice thought that because their schools were described as "failing" they had to leave their schools. Siladi pointed to 30 families who were offered magnet seats but declined them, choosing to remain in their own schools.

An equal number of families have accepted magnet placement.

"We've placed 30 so far," said Siladi.

Siladi says that the district came up with about 80 new seats between the two schools, but said that she does not know how many seats will be taken, or by whom. Both magnets have their own waiting lists from the district's lottery and the district also wants to respect the integrity of the district's lottery.

In order to do that, Central Office is filling slots at magnet schools alternately, pulling first an applicant from the school choice list and then a student from the magnet's own waiting list.

To maintain school balance, the 324 applicants have been ranked by both their economic status and their performance on the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT). Disadvantaged students are more likely to end up placed in a magnet, said Siladi.

Although Stamford may not be able to give school choice to every family who requests it, mandated school choice, she said, is increasing the population of the two magnets.

"We increased the class size to 22 in these schools to accommodate school choice," said Siladi. The average district class size is 20.

At Toquam, the swollen population is presenting some challenges, says Spolowitz. Because the students are not yet in the computer system, there are no buses slated to pick them up.

"The kids don't have transportation yet," said Spolowitz. "That will take some time."

Offering Toquam as a school of choice might get tricky next year, however, said Siladi.

"Toquam did not make AYP this year, so they could be in need of improvement next year," she said.

If the school does not do better on the CMT this coming year, the district will have to provide school choice to Toquam parents as well.

This is only the second year that school choice has been offered in Stamford. Last year choice was not offered at all in Stamford. Because the only two adequately achieving schools were magnets, the city obtained state permission to not offer school choice.

"We did go to surrounding districts and ask them if they would take our students," said Siladi. "We really didn't get a response."